#EnoughAlready!

Why you should ignore the 'banished words' list

January 03, 2014|Eric Zorn | Change of Subject

Nine reasons I've come to despise Lake Superior State University's "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness," released about this time every year since 1976.

1. It's reactionary. Those who contribute to and otherwise administer the list abhor linguistic innovation in all its forms — slang, coinages and catchphrases as well as popular euphemisms and metaphors.

If it's new or popular, they want you to stop using it, by cracky.

"Selfie," for instance, the word that tops this year's roster of 13 candidates for banishment, is an exquisitely apt and neatly concise term for a photographic self-portrait generally taken with a camera-equipped cellular telephone — no doubt the term that the thistlebottoms at Lake Superior State would prefer we employ.

Actually, to judge from the nominating messages highlighted on the university's website, it seems the nominators prefer it even more if people would stop taking such pictures altogether: "It's all about me, me, me," says one message. "Put the smartphone away. Nobody cares about you."

2. It's unimaginative. New developments in technology and culture naturally result in new words that then, also naturally, spread their wings.

Take "hashtag," another verbum non grata this year. It's apparently OK with the LSSU scolds when applied narrowly to describe the "#" symbol used to facilitate topic searches on Twitter (not in the "twittersphere," as they hate that, too).

But the emerging use of hashtag references in conversation and casual writing as a shorthand way to suggest, sometimes absurdly, that an idea can and should be categorized more broadly, well ... that has knickers atwist in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., home of Lake Superior State #otherwiseobscurecolleges.

3. It's humorless. The list targets the "-ageddon" and "-pocalypse" suffixes for elimination this year, even as in previous years it has put out a fatwah on jokes relying on the "-gate" construction, "e-anything," "i-Anything" and the use of "Mc" as a derisive prefix.

4. It's obtuse. "Fan base" is on the 2014 list, evidently part of the listmakers' nearly 40-year quest to eliminate redundant expressions ("all-time record," "close proximity" and "false pretenses" have appeared on earlier decrees). But it's often useful to distinguish between a team's core of loyal, hard-core fans and simply those who follow the team.

5. It's quirky. For some reason, the arbiters representing Lake Superior State got bees in their bonnets this year about the use of "Mr. Mom," the title of a 30-year-old movie, to describe stay-at-home fathers. I see no evidence in the news archives that this term has had any sort of recent resurgence or that it's particularly common.

6. It lacks perspective. This year, the list shudders at "Obamacare," a term that will fade from the news as naturally as "Mama Grizzlies," "Giant sucking sound," "Macarena," "chad," and "Reaganomics" did in previous years.

7. It should talk. Any list that has "Queen's English" in its title has no right to complain about the use of cliches.

8. It's powerless. Sure, "fruitworthy," "funeralized," "communicastor," "bureaucrap" and "cybrarian" all but disappeared from the modern lexicon after making the list, but here are just a few words and expressions that have justifiably survived the scorn of Lake Superior State:

In short, the annual banished-words list is an intellectually bankrupt (a term also given the raspberry this year) public relations stunt foisted on us by those who are at least posing as horrified schoolmarms and schoolmasters for whom language is a dreary, fossilized instrument of basic communication and to whose voices the public never listens anyway.

9. It's irresistible. Despite all this, I, like hundreds of other journalists and commentators, have fallen into their trap and written about the list. #sucker #curses